390 



SCIEWCE. 



[Vol. VIII , Ko. 195 



ings are in use in class-books in half the schools in 

 the country. 



Then, again, it may operate m some such way as 

 this. Take Professor Coues's first edition of his ' Key 

 to North American birds.' This author says in his 

 preface, "Professor Baird kindly offered me the use 

 of all the illustrations of his late review, while 

 Professor Agassiz generously placed at my disposal 

 the plates accompanying Mr. Allen's ' Memoir on the 

 birds of Florida.' Several of the woodcuts have 

 been taken from Professor Tenny's ' Manual of 

 zoology,' with the author's permission; and a few 

 others have been contributed by Messrs. Lee & 

 Shepard. With a few exceptions, the rest of the 

 illustrations have been drawn from nature by the 

 author, and engraved by Mr. C. A. Walker." 



Now, here is a work illustrated by 238 figures, 40 

 of which at least are due to the unequalled genius of 

 Audubon and Wilson ; and yet their names are not 

 even so much as mentioned in the preface, or any- 

 where else in the book, in connection with its illus- 

 trations ! I will say here in justice to Coues, how- 

 ever, that he am^Dly corrected this in the second 

 edition of his 'Key;' but how does it operate? 

 Why, this way : six or seven years afterwards Prof. 

 A. S. Packard publishes a work entitled ' Zoology,' 

 wherein the chapter devoted to birds has 22 figures, 

 at least 14 of which are reduced cuts from either 

 Audubon or Wilson, but each one accredited as being 

 " from Coues's ' Key.' " I hold this to be altogether 

 wrong, and a great injustice to an author or artist 

 naturalist, either living or dead. It is quite as easy 

 to write fig. 465, "Summer duck — from Coues's 

 ' Key,' after Audubon," because that jDerjietuates the 

 genius of a great artist, and relieves Dr. Coues of the 

 responsibility of having drawn the bird in question ! 



Foreign authors are exceedingly careful about 

 such matters in their educational works vqjon bi- 

 ology, for they seem to appreciate the fact that to 

 be otherwise is taking, to say the very least of it, an 

 unfair advantage of a special worker in science, who 

 may not care to publish ' Nature series ' for the pub- 

 lic. The very recent and admirable publications of 

 Mivart, Glaus (A. Sedgwick's translation), Wieders- 

 hsim (W. N. Parker's translation), and F. Jeffrey 

 Bell, will bear me out in this. 



On the other hand, some of our American authors 

 fully deserve the shai'pest of criticism for their care- 

 lessness in such matters, and in other cases more 

 severe handling where it actually comes within the 

 operation of the law. 



As an example of the majority of the suggestions 

 and views that I have just put forth, let us take a 

 little work just gotten out by Professor Packard for 

 the use of American youth in the schools, and a sort 

 of first steps in zoology (steps surely that should be, 

 above all others, in the right direction). I refer to 

 the ' First lessons in zoology ' (New York, Holt). In 

 the present connection, I have nothing to do with the 

 long list of misstatements in biology in this appar- 

 ently very hastily written book, but draw upon it 

 solely to illustrate what I have said about zoological 

 figures. 



Dr. Packard, in its preface, makes a very shiftless 

 acknowledgment of some of the authorities for the 

 illustrations, but leaves a very much larger number 

 where he has completely ignored the artists, and 

 finally says that eight of them were drawn by him- 

 self ; trusting, I presume, that the students would 

 choose from among the most trustworthy and best of 



the unacknowledged ones these eight, and accredit 

 the author with them. 



I observe among several others quite a number of 

 the wonderfully instructive drawings of Prof. E. S. 

 Morse, some of C. V. Riley's, two of my own (figs. 

 196, 197), a drawing by Coues (fig. 203), and others 

 by Hornaday, Eymer Jones, Owen, and many 

 others, none of which receive a single word of ac- 

 knowledgment as being authority for the originals. 



But now a word as to some of the dramngs them- 

 selves, — illustrations that are to be presented to 

 classes of our children, and from which they are 

 supposed to gain or derive their first notions of 

 animal forms. Take fig. 211, for example, said to be 

 a ' head of a dove,' but of rather a raptorial variety, 

 I should mildly suggest. Fig. 212, on the same 

 page, looks, to my mind, far more like the claw of a 

 young lobster than the head of a cockatoo, which it 

 is intended to re23resent. There is hardly a school- 

 boy in America, who has ever given sufficient atten- 

 tion to the matter, who would not know at a glance 

 that the 'Lobate foot of the coot' (fig. 208) is ab- 

 solutely incorrect in important i^articulars. 



As the author says in the preface that it has been 

 ' coiaied by electrotypy,' I do not know the authority 

 for the skeleton of the wild ass (fig. 251), but it 

 certainly gives the impression that the symphysis of 

 the pelvis is not joined, and it strikes me that a 

 better and far safer illustration of the mammalian 

 skeleton could have been chosen to meet the end in 

 view. But enough ; for I believe I have fairly 

 shown that surely these are not the characters of 

 trustworthy illustrations of zoological subjects to 

 bring into the class-room. And I must believe that 

 if any of the youthful students of this little work 

 become naturalists by profession in after-life, and 

 look back upon the drawings I have cited, they will 

 agree with Professor Packard, as he expresses him- 

 self on its p. 142, and with myself, after I had seen 

 the figures in question, that, " even after the lancelet 

 came into being, the steps by which the genuine 

 backboned family became recognized in animal 

 society were painful, and only in a degree success- 

 ful." E. W. Shufeldt. 



Fort Wingate, N. Mex.. Oct. 9. 



The Charleston earthquake. 



I sujjgest an experiment which will, I thiok, clear 

 up the ideas of many persons who may witness it, as 

 to the source of the phenomena of the Charlestou 

 earthquake. 



Let a large sheet of glass (thick plate-glass is per- 

 haps best) be held io a position nearly horizoutal. 

 Place an alcohol-lamp beueathit, near enough to heat 

 it. Long before it is hot enough to soften, it will 

 visibly bend, and then break with noise and more or 

 less shock. It will be violently agitated. 



To apply this, suppose that dense strata of rock 

 exist at a great depth below the earth's surface, under- 

 lying the coast region from the Alleghanies far out 

 under the ocean ; that in the course of ages portions 

 of these sheets hundreds of feet thick, hundreds of 

 miles wide, and perhaps a thousand miles long, have 

 been slowly increasing in temperature, and expand- 

 ing or endeavoring to expand. For a long time, and 

 to a considerable amount of expansion over such 

 large areas, the tendency to expand merely makes 

 the rock denser; i.e., sets up internal strains, com- 

 pressing the substance of the rock as confined — a 

 mile square of it, fifty miles square of it — to the 



